The post 8 reasons why Bowser always fails appeared first on Game News.
]]>1. He always insists on lava
Yes, rivers of molten rock can bring out the evilness of an evil villain, but Bowser is a Koopa. Which is just a turtle with a different name. Turtles and fiery volcanic discharge do not go well together. Seriously. Bowser hasn’t learnt his lesson since Super Mario Bros. That was over 25 years ago. He’s still falling into his own lava. It’s ridiculous. Insisting on lava is stupid enough. But insisting that he battles Mario while being in dangerously close proximity to lava (like on a rubbish bridge) is stretching the concept of a suicidally brainless turtle to its most asinine limits. As a turtle, he might do better if he surrounded himself with some other element instead. Like, say, oh I don’t know…water?
2. His traps aren’t ambitious enough
Above: Get past that you little prick
Wow, Bowser, those slowly rotating flame spindle obstacles are totally going to stop Mario in his tracks. He’s going to see them and he’s going to know that he has met his match. He’s going to turn around and go straight home to Luigi, crying all the way. He absolutely isn’t just going to jump over them like they’re not even there. No sir. Just a bit of advice, though, when the traps are at the design stage, you might want to think bigger. Aim for something that might actually be effective in the task of stopping Mario. Like an enormous and completely impassable wall of fire. Just a suggestion.
3. He’s rubbish at kidnapping
Above: Here is Bowser about to kidnap Princess Peach again. Notice how he is not very inconspicuous
Maybe if the King of Koopas was a little more discrete and snatched away Princess Peach when nobody was around to witness the deed he’d have a better chance of getting away with it. But he seems to deliberately go out of his way to make sure Mario knows of his despicable doings. And once Mario knows of Bowser’s despicable doings, it’s only a matter of time before Bowser ends up in the lava. Again. Like an idiot.
4. He breathes the world’s slowest fireballs
Above: Gee, Mario. Look out for that f-i-r-e-b-a-l-l. Oh, Bowser’s dead already
The ability to breathe fireballs is unquestionably bad ass. But when said fireballs move only marginally faster than the running speed of an overweight Italian plumber, it’s hardly worth burning the inside of your mouth for. Against Mario, Bowser’s fireballs are just, well, a bit balls really.
5. He always hides Peach in the most obvious place in the entire Mushroom Kingdom
Above: This is the correct sort of place to hold someone captive
I’m no expert in the business of kidnapping, but I always presumed that the general idea was to hide your hostage in the last place anyone would ever think to look. Some place not altogether obvious. If you are the known perpetrator of the kidnapping and your name is Bowser, then holding the prisoner captive in a castle that is commonly known as Bowser’s Castle is a stupid idea. As is putting her on a boat that has a huge Bowser head stuck to the bow and a big Bowser flag flying from the mast. Surely keeping Peach at the bottom of a disused warp pipe in some abandoned brick factory would be the logical choice.
6. His castles are designed by Mario sympathisers
It’s the only explanation. Otherwise they would surely be furnished with floating Bowser blocks full of useful objects to facilitate the annihilation of Mario. Instead of it being, like, the other way round. Note to Bowser: remember to reference check the architects.
7. He has an army of useless minions
>>>NEWS FLASH FOR BOWSER! GOOMBAS ARE SHITE! And if it’s not Goombas being useless it’s some other idiot minion ineffectually wandering back and forth along the same predetermined path like a sad polar bear at the zoo. They’re just waiting for Mario to come along and put them out of their misery by jumping on their heads or some other conveniently vulnerable and completely unprotected area of their personage. Unless Bowser starts issuing suitable body armour and exploding hats to his troops, they’ll continue to be as effectual as a turtle in lava. Oh.
8. He doesn’t really want to win
It’s the only explanation. I refuse to believe that anyone – even an overgrown video game turtle – can be so consistently inept at their chosen vocation. He’s been doing the exact same stuff, falling for the exact same tricks, falling in his own lava over and over again for more than two decades. That doesn’t happen by accident. Bowser has a problem. He’s trapped in a negative behaviour pattern which manifests as this perpetual self-conditioning of failure.
I get the sense that there is much more to Bowser than we realise. That he is an incredibly complex Koopa with deep-rooted issues that could probably be traced back to an unhappy childhood. But I’m not a psychologist. All I see when I look at Bowser is a big stupid turtle that breathes slow fireballs, has a rubbish army, stands on rickety bridges above rivers of his own lava and occasionally enjoys sports with other citizens of the Mushroom Kingdom. He’s gaming’s most successful loser and he is destined to fail many more times in the next 25 years. Silly turtle.
The post 8 reasons why Bowser always fails appeared first on Game News.
]]>The post 10 merciless Mario re-imaginings appeared first on Game News.
]]>Mario Brothers
It’s possible you’ve already seen Alexander “Alxlen” Leon’s (opens in new tab)epic, five-part take on Mario, simply titled Mario Brothers. After all, it’s been on free-form Flash portal Newgrounds (opens in new tab)since mid-2003. If you haven’t, though, you’re missing out on a surprisingly well-directed (and almost relentlessly grim) version of Super Mario Bros., told entirely with sprites from the first and second games. A little slow in places, it’s nonetheless captivating, giving us a tragic version of Mario, fearless Toads, swarming Koopas and a murderous version of Bowser.
It’s probably best to start at the beginning (opens in new tab)of Alxlen’s sad tale. However, few things in the series are quite as memorable or as stirring as the explosive siege that makes up its entire second episode, which uses the (somewhat clichéd) Requiem for a Dream theme music to grand effect:
Another Castle
A world-weary webcomic focused mainly on Luigi, Another Castle (opens in new tab)stars versions of the brothers (and their princesses) who’ve escaped into the real world and left the Mushroom Kingdom behind. However, while Luigi and Daisy have clearly adapted to everyday life, Mario and Peach weren’t so fortunate, and now spend their days hiding from debt collectors and being delusional.
(opens in new tab)
“The melancholic mood is just sorta where my head was at,” said its author, MC Griffin (opens in new tab), who’s since created a color version (opens in new tab)and a second chapter (opens in new tab), and is planning a third with Yoshi. “It’s inspired by all those unspoken things that go on between people. You know, you ever get that vibe when you walk into a room full of folks and feel like you’re missing some inside joke, but nobody’s saying a word? Always seemed like it was that way in Mario.”
(opens in new tab)
“What if Luigi saves the princess?” he added. “Why does he always get paired up with Daisy despite never saving her in any game? Seems like Mario kind of lends itself to strange stories when you start reading between the lines and asking questions of things.”
Mario: Game Over
As you may be starting to realize after that last entry, bringing Mario into the real world seems to be the surest way to bring him down (but in a funny way). Try to think of realistic equivalents for Mario and what he does, and you’ll end up with an infantile drug addict who deals with problems by getting huge and beating the shit out of them. That seems to have been the guiding idea behind Mario: Game Over (by Brooklyn comedy troupe POYKPAC (opens in new tab)), which shows Mario in a brief, disastrous downward spiral after saving the Mushroom Kingdom and coming home.
It Sucks to be
Weegie!
Prolific web cartoonist Kevin Bolk’s It Sucks to be Weegie! (opens in new tab)isn’t merciless in the “drugs and death lol” sense. In fact, at first blush it actually looks quite lighthearted. Keep reading, however, and you’ll see that there’s a subtle cruelty to it. Luigi was never the bravest or most beloved character in the Mario mythos, but here he suffers under a Charlie Brown-like burden of loserdom, continually failing at absolutely everything and earning nothing but spite for his efforts.
(opens in new tab)
Citing the Super Mario Adventures comics (by Charlie Nozawa) that appeared in early ‘90s Nintendo Power as a huge influence, Bolk says that his real aim isn’t to dump on Luigi, but “to build sympathy for my favorite under-appreciated second fiddle of the video game world.”
“It’s all a very carefully crafted public relations campaign,” Bolk said.
Mario (SXSW
bumper)
The Mario-as-delusional-addict school of thought reaches its apex in Joe Nicolosi’s (opens in new tab) Mario, a comically dark psychodrama about drugs, rejection, obsession, kart-racing and hipsters. Shot as an indie-flavored bumper (a short that plays before films) for the SXSW 2011 Film Festival, its version of Mario is a blue-collar stalker who wants to beat down Peach’s new boyfriend and win her back.
It’s a shame we’ll probably never see a full-length version. This is already loads better than the 1993 movie.
- 1
- 2
Current page:
Page 1
The post 10 merciless Mario re-imaginings appeared first on Game News.
]]>